AN: This is to all my fans and minions with somewhat questionable loyalties, thank you for the patience while I battled with this chapter to get it up to snuff finally; it's been a battle and half getting from there to here, finally it's here it's done with.
Thank you to my ever working 'research donkeys' and 'Grammar Nazi's' you know who you are, thank you all for putting up with my shenanigans both sober and drunk, I cannot blame drunk Leroy for the delays this time.
But enough about me, enjoy reading this rewrite and get back to me with a review or PM or Discord DM with any gripes.
Any flames will be used to roast my marshmallows.
Signed.
Your Glorious Overlord.
March 17th 2207 EMC [Earth Military Calendar] 2151 CE [Common Era].
Deep Space, Unmapped System.
SSV LION R-106, Combat Information Centre.
[+153 Days Since Departure.]
[Play: Two Steps From Hell: Battlecry - Victory]
"All hands this is the Captain, set condition Bravo throughout the ship. This is not a drill. Set condition Bravo throughout the ship."
After months of drills, the call had finally come, it was time for the Lion's marines to step up to the plate, to defend their home if it came to a boarding action.
The Special Orbital Infantry Service (SOIS) rushed through the doors of their designated armouries to retrieve their weapons and armour from the quartermaster. The Turian marines of Steel Raptor Troop followed behind SOIS, donning their armour systems beside their human counterparts.
The marines of Steel Raptor Troop couldn't help but be a little envious of their counterparts as they secured their 'plate carriers' with wings, collar and cup in less than a minute, before securing their helmets, forearm guards and shin guards with little effort.
There were a few variations of armour systems provided to the marines, most Turians however, were interested in the M56 armour protection system (APS).
A system which provided the necessary equipment to operate the devastating M57-D, a section support weapon, a weapon so devastating it proved capable of turning any unlucky idiot into chunks of meat if they happened to be caught in its infrared sight.
With a strong twelve hundred rounds per minute fire rate and a powered articulating arm, the M57-D was demonstrated in the shooting range where it was shown to hit centre mass without fail at any range up to one thousand metres.
Just like they had drilled hundreds of times, the marines broke down into eight man sections before making their way to the designated muster, or choke points throughout the Lion.
If it came to repelling boarders the 'enemy' were in for one hell of a brutal surprise as sections of titanium plate rose up to provide cover for the crewmen who stood ready for action.
Up in the main batteries the gun captains watched as their crews rammed red and white tipped two thousand kilogramme rounds into specialised breeches.
The guns automatically pulled power from the hot-standby capacitors to charge the magnetic coils that would propel the rounds at point oh four the speed of light.
The gunners were situated behind a three inch plate in a self-contained compartment at the rearmost of the turret. It had been decided that no chances were going to be taken and all three guns, on all fifty batteries, were to be loaded with armour piercing anti capital high explosive rounds. Better known to the Systems Alliance public as APACHE rounds, a devastating round, especially if it actually detonated within the target itself.
The rounds were filled with a volatile gelatine compound called promethium phosphex. The two chemicals were separated by a non-reactive metal which would breach thanks to a tungsten penetrator when the rounds impacted solidly, allowing the two chemicals to mix with explosive results.
Alternatively, the rounds did come with a mechanical timer which could be activated with a screwdriver of all things, this locked the penetrator in place until an explosive charge fired the penetrator through the plate.
Meanwhile, as the crew readied for what could be a do or die situation, six independent supercomputers buried deep within the Lion's superstructure co-ordinated the five hundred and sixty Phalanx anti-fighter / anti-missile batteries.
Each computer operated all of the given batteries in a single dedicated sector, those being the dorsal, ventral, port, starboard, bow and stern sectors respectively.
Each computer had two backups in case the primary computers sustained damage throughout their service life, which would take over until repairs or a replacement could be sourced in the near future.
The twenty Rapier anti-ship missile pods on the Lion's ventral flanks remained retracted in an attempt to not look like they were preparing for an all or nothing fight, ditto for the torpedo tubes.
The Lion had to look threatening enough that whoever's fleet occupied the system would think twice about firing the first shot; whilst trying to balance on a knife's edge and not be overly threatening to the point that whoever was in charge felt as if a gun was put to their head.
The Lion's CIC was filled to the brim with activity, reports were coming in from all of the stations.
All hands stood ready at condition Bravo. Viper Squadrons red and blue were ready for the word to deploy, their forward landing gear already hooked up to the electro-magnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS) for a rapid launch from the retracted flight pods.
Main engineering had reported to Commander Liam that they were pushing the primary and secondary reactors to 110%, shunting all the excess power into the jump drives.
This was a somewhat disapproved trick of the trade to reduce the time it took for the FTL capacitors to charge to near maximum in the shortest possible time.
All measures to attain the best speed possible were being taken; Liam shifted uncomfortably as it struck him that all they could hope for now was a sign that the digital first contact package had got the point across and maybe by some miracle we would be able to translate each other's language in short order.
Liam could only speculate on how far back this would push the primary mission; So for the time being, they needed to make nice with whatever species occupied the system.
Hopefully they could smooth things over, and if they agreed, leave two communication buoys at their system to set up contact with Earth. Only time would tell.
March 17th 2207 EMC [Earth Military Calendar] 2150 CE [Common Era].
Montresor Sector, Lording Montresor System.
The Home Fleet, Flagship HMRS Legacy.
[+1 Hour Since First Contact.]
[Play: Dan Thiessen: There Will Be Generations Because Of You (Single) - There Will Be Generations Because Of You]
The HMRS Legacy, the crown jewel of the Montressian Royal Navy, one of three in service Sovereign class battleships, with four currently in space dock being built.
Legacy stood at 685.5 metres in length, 250.6 metres in beam and 88.2 metres in depth.
Sheathed in silver duranium armour plating, armed with seventy state of the art phaser turrets, 24 photon missile pods and seven torpedo tubes, four forward facing torpedo tubes and three aft facing torpedo tubes.
With the sudden appearance of the unknown vessel in the home system, dozens of automated sensor nets had alerted the entirety of the navy that a threat existed.
If the status was not manually changed by the government and military bodies jointly within 24 hours, all warships had standing orders to reorganize and regroup at a specific rendezvous site, with further orders to return to defend the home system by warping in with all guns blazing.
The admiral in charge of the home fleet hoped it never came to that.
The admiral stood proudly at 5 foot 11 inches, with sand and cream colored fur; her lithe body filled out in all the right places, as her husband kept telling her every chance they had together.
She donned the royal blue navy overcoat with a high collar with ten gold buttons set beside one another in two rows of five, finishing with traditional coattails that reached just below the back of her knees.
Underneath the overcoat she donned a one-piece two tone officer issued EVA rated under-suit; the top half being white ending at the hips where the uniform turned to a light grey, over which she donned thigh-high female issued leather boots, and wore a pair of white issued leather gloves which had the necessary seals inside.
To denote the admiral's rank gold trimming around the cuffs, alongside a golden sash worn from her left shoulder and right hip provided a placement for the admiral's most auspicious medals and honours, whilst various campaign ribbons and medals were placed on the right breast of her overcoat.
At forty years of age, she was the youngest female officer to attain the rank of admiral; she also happened to be the lady of the noble house of Hstokk and loving wife to Lord Hstokk, the First Space Lord of the Royal Navy.
She stood from her command chair and moved to the front and centre of the bridge with her chestnut hair tied in a regulation bun as she looked out from the bridge towards the warship that had suddenly appeared in the system.
A vessel that truly outgunned, out armoured and outmassed her flagship by an order of magnitude; she couldn't help but worry to some small degree.
The sensors suite of the Legacy however had provided them with one small mercy, the vessel lacked shielding of any kind.
Not that it mattered, she thought to herself.
The armour plating was so thick and made from the purest form of titanium on record.
Even the bow mounted super heavy phaser cannons of the venerable Victory class battleships would struggle to pierce that much armour and cause any significant damage.
What had given the young admiral hope was the way in which the vessel and its crew had and was continuing to conduct itself.
It had purposefully avoided a head-on collision with Voyager-7, the seventh long-range colony ship to be launched towards their neighboring system, if only just by mere metres.
Even though its main battery and tertiary anti-missile point defence batteries were active, they had yet to be used in an aggressive manner.
The vessels torpedo and missile systems remained inactive and even though eighty port and starboard tubes were 'open' she suspected whatever was ready to be launched in them wouldn't do so unless the unknown vessel felt threatened enough to use them.
For an hour now the vessel had yet to respond to any hails sent by her communications officer.
At first, she believed it was a language issue but as she thought about it further it may be a technological issue.
Turning to her female communications officer she ordered, "Lieutenant scan for signals on a broader spectrum they may be transmitting on wavelength beyond what our current communications array is pre-programmed to use."
The Lieutenant quickly acknowledged and manipulated the controls to adjust the array settings manually, "Ma'am! I'm picking up a signal burst on the very-high-frequency spectrum."
"Very good, double check that your console is isolated from the network and perform a quick check on your console's firewalls, I don't want us caught with our pants down." A quick aye ma'am was all the Lieutenant said as she performed the tasks.
"Ma'am all systems triple checked, we're secure." She replied.
"Alright adjust our array to the frequency. Let's see what we have."
"Ma'am it's Audio and Visual data ma'am." Nodding, she approached the station.
"Play it." Nodding, the Lieutenant patched the audio and visual feed to her main display, and though the audio was nothing either of them could understand, the meaning wasn't.
"It's a first contact package, ma'am, no malware or cyber intrusion has been detected, I have everything we need to plug the written and spoken language into the main computer, I could have us communicating very basically with the crew in a couple of hours."
"Get it done, whilst you're at it have our own First Contact Package transmitted back on the same frequency, let hope they're listening." Taking her place at the captain's chair Admiral Hstokk took to reading a PADD which had all of the Unknown vessels gleaming information.
March 28th 2151 CE [Common Era] 2207 EMC [Earth Military Calendar].
Turian Hierarchy Space, Inner Colony Space.
Apien Crest, Trebia System, Palaven.
Cipritine Military Anchorage.
[+5 Months since HNV Invictus was Declared MIA with all hands.]
[Play: Guillaume David - Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus Soundtrack - Children of the Omnissiah]
Admiral Gavilan Nyx stood alongside his ever loyal wife Commodore Ardella Nyx, both had been given time to themselves whilst the Admiralty took to modernising the 17th Fleet and the 209th Battlegroup.
The Hierarchy, contracting a lot of the work out to the Quarians' who, contrary to popular belief of the other Council races actually received a steady source of credits and fair working rights for any contracted works undertaken, after all, Turian's were a Pragmatic bunch.
They saw no reason not to hire the Galaxy's greatest engineers to do what they have done for 300 years, adapt and overcome; the Migrant Fleet had long since overcome the sheer logistical nightmare of keeping ships operating far beyond their predicted service life.
So why not the Premier Naval Power in the known galaxy?
Even today thousands of the enviro-suited engineers were still visible from the primary Anchorage as their vibrantly coloured forms busied themselves servicing the last of the new systems, systems that had been installed universally throughout the assembled one hundred and forty some vessels.
As payment for the sudden rush order for the contracted and tight schedule of work that was to be completed on such short notice, the Turian Hierarchy agreed to 'Sell'' [See: Gift.] the Migrant fleet with two Bulk Freighters and their most recently retired Heavy Cruiser HNV Divine Retribution.
The assembled vessels were looking at an average increase in power output by seventeen percent, whilst that didn't sound overly impressive, it was when that percentage was put into a context even Vorcha could understand.
Dreadnoughts now had enough power to fire their standard forty-kilogramme slugs, followed immediately by a twenty-kilogramme armour piercing slug on a single full charge, dealing a one-two knockout shot against any vessel it was used against.
A feat deemed impractical by the ever smug Asari, and too systems intensive by the genius Salarian's.
Cruisers now had an excess of power giving them the capability to utilise hull mounted Omni-Fabricators capable of forming Ablative Omni-Armour much like the vaunted Salarian designed Tech-Armour which had just been released to the military market.
The Quarrian who thought that little idea up had been given an ample head's up by the Hierarchy to Patent his work, selling the design under licence at a heavy discount to the Hierarchy.
The Volus being both shrewd bankers and excellent lawyers managed to be both the first race to invest heavily in the fledgling Qwib-Qwib Ships Systems Ltd, whilst simultaneously quashing any moves by the mega-corps in the courts to shut the company down.
Finally, on to the Frigates, doctrine had dictated that the upgrades focused on manoeuvrability over firepower and survivability but the Quarrian's had outdone themselves yet again, improving the primary drives and drive core cooling system so that any excess power would be safely cycled into the newly increased battery of GUARDIAN point defence batteries.
Frigates could double up more effectively as screening vessels against mass missile and torpedo barrages. Something slaver fleets relied all too heavily upon.
Both Gavilan Nyx and Ardella Nyx smiled at the thought, with final preparations and onsite testing to be completed within the next week, both the 17th Fleet and the 209th Battlegroup would undertake a month-long shakedown run, to eliminate any faults in the system before undertaking their upcoming mission.
Making slavers regret their life choices.
And to make sure the mission had the greatest chance of success against the Hegemony, the council of Primarch's had decided to keep their dear Councillor in the dark about the coming operation, by declaring the coming mission as a piracy policing action.
Afterall, with friends like the Republic and Union it was best to keep them at arm's length, lest the actual objective be 'leaked' to the Hegemony as it seemed to happen with alarming regularity.
March 28th 2207 EMC [Earth Military Calendar] 2150 CE [Common Era].
Montresor Sector, Lording Montresor System.
SSV Lion R-106, Orbiting Montresor.
[+11 Days Since First Contact.]
[Play: Johnny Collins: Leave Her Johnny (single) - Leave Her Johnny]
After the Initial week of trying to communicate to a high enough standard between our three races it was agreed between both the Royal Family and the military hierarchy that we could deploy two satellites on the very edge of the Montresor System.
The first of which was a Relay Satellite that would continue the regular FTL comm-link as we journeyed once more towards Turian Space, the second a Direct Quantum Entanglement Comm-buoy of which only six existed, three of which were locked securely in a cargo-hold under SOIS armed guard.
These comm-buoys would provide near instantaneous communications between Humanity and any other space faring races.
Namely the Turian Hierarchy, but with first contact with the Montressian government it seemed best for us to leave the politicking machinations to the professionals and not left to Liam and his staff, even though he had garnered quite the working relationship with the senior officers of the Montressian Royal Navy, after they heard just what his ships standing mission was.
Four days later, after some intense political drama on both sides an agreement was made and a formal non-aggression and civilian trade agreement was hashed out between both of our races.
Realising the opportunity my ship and its mission presented, the Montressian Royal Navy's Admiralty requested further talks with the Systems Alliance Admiralty to formally open an officer exchange programme, which bled over to the Montressian Diplomatic Corps once more as they intended to offer a similar formal non-aggression and civilian trade agreement with the Hierarchy themselves.
By the end of it all, the Lion had been stationed above the home world more specifically in geo-synchronous orbit above the Royal Capital City of Pendergrad for a full month, additionally fifty of the Montressian Royal Navy's finest officer corps had taken station aboard the Lion, for the remainder of their journey to Turian Space.
The feline humanoids, while soft spoken and well mannered were predators first and foremost and much like the turian's their claws were proof of this fact.
It wouldn't be until the 5th of May when the Lion would make the best possible speed for the edge of the Lording Montresor System under a full escort, where the fleet would witness the Lion jump out of the system in a brilliant flash of white light.
With the Lion well underway and some level of normality achieved Liam personally took to giving a full in-depth operational capability tour, while his duties were light for the time being.
While the dull metal grey and industrial look that made the entirety of the Lion's interior was a far cry from what they as officers of the Montressian Royal Navy were used to, as their own vessels were sleek and had form prioritised over function.
They could appreciate the legacy of one of the oldest serving warships still in service between all three navies, she was rugged and rough because it worked, systems were analogue because it worked, the primary batteries were coil guns because they were lethal to the extreme and they worked.
As the saying went. It just works.
It was a change of pace, they as officers were here to learn to adapt and acquire the best possible practices of their allies to integrate and overcome shortfalls in their own navy and if things stayed on track, they had months to years to learn from one of the Systems Alliance's finest crews.
Things would not be easy by any stretch of the Imagination, but they had been picked for their skills and dedication to the Royal Navy and they would not show it in a bad light, by bringing it or the Royal family to disrepute.
They'd rather be shot than let that happen, one officer at the back of the pack clutching the issued pad handed out on the first day they had arrived nervously smiled every time the human officer in command looked towards her, his posture and brown eyes speaking volumes of the battles and experience he had accumulated.
One thing ran through her and every other Montressian officers' minds, he was the alpha male holding the title with an iron fist, no one amongst them would question his order, unless it directly contradicted their Naval Laws.
To Be Continued….
AN: If you've reached this far, first of all. Good for you, you glorious so and so's I have two bits of news.
Firstly I've had a good number of fans join my Discord server, joining my ever growing legion of minions.
Secondly, I've started a , to help pursue my passion of writing on a full time basis, I'll be producing SSV Lion merchandise such as patches, coasters and mugs, maybe expanding into shirts if there is enough demand in the future.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions in the near future.
Signed.
The God Emperor of Mankind His Divine Holiness the Manperor of Mankind, by grace of himself of the United Imperium of Man, and of all Sectors and Sub-Sectors therein, God Emperor, Head of the Ecclesiarchy, Defender of the One True Faith and Avatar of the Machine God and the one true God of the Warp.
#Fuck you Tzeentch you're a nerd!